Beer Alcohol Content
Learn how much alcohol is in that beer your drinking. For your safety and mine.

W
hile we all love the taste of beer, it's the alcohol content thats responsible for beers standing
in most societies. Its the alcohol content of beer that makes it the number one social lubricant.

The alcohol content of beer is generally denoted by the "percent alcohol by volume", or % ABV.
"Percent alcohol by wieght", % ABW, could also be used. It's easy to convert between them.
ABW = 0.8 × ABV.

Beer's alcohol content varies between about 3% ABV to about 12% ABV. However there are some outliers.
"Low alcohol beer", also known as "non-alcoholic beer" contains less than 1% ABV. The strongest beer
ever made was the Hair of the Dog Brewing Company's barley wine named "Dave", which was 29% ABV.

The type of beer plays a large role in the alcohol content. While it's not exact, if you know the
type of beer you can generally estimate how much alcohol you will be imbibing.

This is an important skill to have. For instance if you go to a pub and all your friends are drinking
pale ales, and you start ordering barleywines; if you try to keep up with them, you might not make it
out of the pub without being carried. The following chart will help in these situations: